The Girls Who Were Really Built
The Girls Who Were Really Built
In Neosho, anyway, it started with Candy Brown. It had been going on for years in bigger places, I guess, but nobody thought anything about it.
I was only ten when Candy came in on the bus from Kansas City, but even I knew that a girl shaped like Candy, with a face like Candy, and a name like Candy had no business in a town like Neosho, Kansas. She belonged in New York modeling strapless evening dresses or black lace underwear or soap bubbles. Her real business—no matter what she was selling—was love.
That was the word that rhymed with Candy.
I've heard that fashions in female beauty change just like in clothes. Maybe my great-grandfather would have thought Candy was too skinny in the legs or the waist and too full in the hips and the bust, but the flabbergasted young men of Neosho wouldn't have redistributed an ounce.
The news spread through town faster than the time they busted the jug of mail-order perfume down at the post office. Before Candy got to the hotel, the lobby was already crowded. The lucky ones got chairs; the rest had to stand around and act like they were selling steers.
I was luckiest of all. I was only ten and I could go right up to her and look at her long, blond hair and her blue eyes and her red, red lips, and I could smell her.…She smelled like new-mown hay when you're rolling in it.
People talked. Particularly the women. Some said she was married, and there was no use sniffing around because her husband would be along. Some said she wasn't, but she should be. Some said she was a widow, and some said she wasn't any better than she ought to be and the sheriff oughtn't to allow that sort of thing to go on in Neosho and right in the hotel, too.
Folks called her "Miz" Brown—halfway between "Miss" and "Missis"—like you call women before you know whether they're married or not. I knew, though, that first day. There was no ring on her finger, and, besides, she promised to marry me.
That was just after she'd signed the register for poor Marv Kincaid, the day clerk. Marv finally ripped his eyes off her long enough to read what she'd written. "Candy," he'd sighed, like an old cow settling down for the night.
That's when I piped up. "Miss Candy," I said. "Will you marry me?"
She looked down and smiled. The fellows in the lobby sighed, all together. The object of it—me—floated a foot off the marble floor.
"What's your name?" she asked, in a voice as sweet as molasses and twice as smooth.
"Jim," I said faintly.
"Sure I'll marry you, Jim," she said. "You hurry and grow up."
But she didn't. She married Marv Kincaid, the homeliest man in town, and settled down to make a home for him. Folks said nothing good would come of it. They said she would leave him or drive him to drink, or they would find him with his hand in the hotel cash drawer or in the basement some morning with his throat grinning.
But I didn't notice much difference, except Marv started staying home nights instead of hanging around the pool hall, and he took a correspondence course from the University, and he wound up manager of the hotel.
Nobody ever had any trouble from Candy, not Marv or anybody. She kept to herself. She didn't gossip, socialize, or flirt—and I guess that made the women madder than anything. Besides, the young fellows soon had other things to think about.
Like Tracy. She came right after Candy got married. She and Candy might have been twins, except that Tracy had red hair, and they didn't look a bit alike. Like Candy, though, Tracy was a man's dream of heaven, a sweet-formed, sweet-faced angel.
Doc Winslow got her. He wasn't Doc Winslow then, of course. He was plain Fred Winslow, and he was no catch. It was later that he got busy and put an M.D. after his name. Doc always said that Tracy was a big help.
I asked him once how come Tracy married him. He thought about it awhile and then said, "I wondered that, too. Not then. I was too excited about how lucky I was and too scared something would happen before the wedding. The way I figured, though, I was the first one who had guts enough to ask her."
"Ever talk about it?"
He shook his head quick. "Even after almost thirty years, I'm scared I might get the wrong answer."
I knew what he meant. Because after Tracy came Choo-Choo, and after Choo-Choo came Kim, and after Kim came Dallas, and after Dallas came April, and I was eighteen, then, and April married me.
April was a blonde, like Candy. She was shaped like Candy, too. They might have been made in the same mold. It worried me a little at first. I figured maybe that was why I fell in love with her. I was wrong. First time I got her alone I asked her to marry me, and she said "Yes." April made me a perfect wife, and I never was sorry I got married, not once. Find another man who could say that.
April was everything a wife ought to be. She was even-tempered but not cowlike, affectionate but not possessive, interested in my work but not nosy. What's more, she could cook. In the morning she got up, smiling, to cook me a good breakfast. At noon she had a tasty lunch waiting for me--but easy on the calories. And for dinner there was always something extra-special.
She kept my socks mended, my buttons sewed on, my shirts ironed, my shoes polished, and at bed-time—Well, in Neosho that's the time we pull down the shades. She was everything her face and figure promised—that's enough for any man.
On Saturday she washed the car.
Maybe other places it's different, but in Neosho that's all we ask in a wife.
The women talked. Women always do. They said, "Where are they all coming from, that's what I want to know.…Well, she's flashy, but she's not a speck prettier than my Jane, and I'll bet she can't bake like Jane.…If they're such prizes, why did they have to come to Neosho to get a man.…There's something wrong with all of them, mark my words. You'll see some pretty unhappy men one of these days."
But the unhappy men were the ones who were already married before Candy came in on the bus from Kansas City. The others turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Take me. I got me a job at the bank, worked hard, and now I'm first vice-president. Next year, when old Mr. Bailey retires, I'll be president.
Jess Hall, who married Choo-Choo, worked his way through law school, and now he's Neosho's top attorney. Lije Simpson, who married Kim, is a U.S. senator. And Byron George, who married Dallas, he owns a string of super-markets. I could go on. The girls kept coming after April and kept getting married. All their husbands did well. The ones who died, their wives married again and made something of those men, too.
There was something about those husbands that made them succeed. They had the ambition and the energy to work harder than other men. Maybe it was because they knew what they had at home, and they never worried about it. That was the way it was with me.
Who I felt sorry for was the Neosho girls. There was nothing wrong with them. They just couldn't stand up to the competition. None of them got married. Who'd marry a Neosho girl when he could get a girl like Candy—or April?
The only thing was—well, it happened like this.
Saturday night was poker night. We got together down at the hotel, Marv and Doc and me and Jess and By George and Lije when he was in town. This Saturday, Congress being in recess, he was.
April made no fuss when I left. She never does. But I felt a kind of premonition at the door, and I turned and said, "You sure you don't mind me leaving you alone?"
She straightened my shirt collar with her gentle hands and kissed me, looking no older than she had twenty years before and even prettier. "Why should I?" she asked, not nasty like some women might, but simple and direct. "Six nights a week you're home with me. You deserve a night out with the boys." And she pushed me through the doorway.
It was during the hand I filled a third ace to my two pair, naturally, that Doc said, "It's a funny thing—six of us here, happily married men, and not a chick nor child among us."
Lije chuckled. "Maybe that's why we're happily married. Folks I know with kids, they're jumpy and snappy. Things get on their nerves. Little things."
"What I mean," Doc said, "not a single one of the girls has any kids."
"That can't be so," said By, but we couldn't think of a single one of the girls who had any children.
Doc went on slowly. "There aren't hardly any little ones around any more. For awhile I thought they were going to young Fisher or Johnson, but there aren't any hardly."
"Why?" Jess asked bluntly.
"In my own case," Doc said. "Tracy is sterile." He looked sober. "I wanted kids, so after awhile I checked up. When I found out—" He shrugged. "I figured a man can't have everything."
"I thought it was me," said By.
"So did I," said Mary. "It seemed impossible that Candy—"
We all nodded. It did seem impossible. We sat there without talking for a minute. I even forgot my full house.
"Well—?" I said.
"Well what?" said Marv.
"What's the explanation."
"Maybe," Doc said reluctantly, "they're all sterile."
"Why?" Jess asked again.
Doc shrugged.
I started not liking the conversation. "Let's play poker."
Jess took it up. He was always sharp, Jess was. Nobody wanted to stand up against him in court. "Where did they come from? Anybody ever ask?"
"I never had the nerve," said By. "It might be unlucky, like counting your chips."
We nodded. It was like that.
Then Marv spoke up. "Candy came from Passaic, New Jersey. It was on her baggage check."
"So did Choo-Choo," said Jess. He hesitated. "I asked her."
We looked at him with the respect of sensible cowards for a fool with guts enough to play Russian roulette.
"What have they got at Passaic?" By said.
"A lot of beautiful mothers," Doc said.
You've been around where someone will toss off an idea, casual like, and someone else will carry it on to something new and valuable? Well, Jess started running with the ball. "You ever heard any of the girls mention family? Father, mother, brothers, sisters?"
We all shook our heads.
Damn it! He was beginning to make me wonder.
Marv couldn't stand it. "Well," he demanded, "whathave they got at Passaic?"
Jess shrugged. "A factory maybe?"
We laughed. Part of it was relief. It was a joke after all.
"Who ever heard," By said, "of a factory making things to give away?"
"Ever hear of installment payments?" Jess asked, his eyes slitted thoughtfully. "Do you keep track of every penny you give Dallas? Or maybe, like me, you hand over five dollars here, ten dollars there. Nothing down and twenty dollars a week for the rest of your life. Or more. They could make anything pay."
I mused softly, "There never seems half as much stuff around as April asks money to buy."
By shrugged impatiently. "We can afford it. Besides, if it weren't for Dallas, I wouldn't have it to give her—I'll swear to that. A good wife is worth whatever you have to pay."
"Maybe so," Doc said, "but can we afford the other thing? The sterility? Sure, as individuals. But how about as a town, as a nation, as a race." He looked thoughtful. "It don't matter if there are no more Winslows. But Neosho's dying. So is the U.S. The birthrate is dropping. The experts say it's a natural swing from the abnormally high rates of the forties and fifties, but match the percentage of Passaic girls in Neosho against the falling birthrate, and I bet it would fit like Tracy's bathing suit."
"That's stupid!" Marv objected. "A business can't wipe out its own market."
"It can," Jess said, "if that's its business."
"The Reds?" By tried on himself. "Nahhh! We haven't had any trouble with them in a coon's age. They've got their own problems."
"One of which," Doc said grimly, "is the same one we've got—the falling birthrate."
"Besides," I said, trying to cool off everybody's imaginations, "anything we could figure out here, the F.B.I. would have uncovered years ago."
"Exactly," Jess said.
"What do you mean by that?" Marv complained.
"He means," Doc said slowly, "maybe it's a scheme by our own government to cut the birthrate."
Jess shook his head. "Too drastic. Looks to me like this is for keeps. I bet there hasn't been anyone but a Passaic girl married in Neosho in twenty years. And I don't think there's been a child born here in five years—you know, to the McDaniels, and she was almost forty."
By looked hard at Jess. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?"
Jess rubbed his sweaty hands on a balled-up handkerchief. "I'm scared." You could tell from his voice—he really was.
Marv said in a thin, nervous voice, "Well, you're scaring us, too. Go on. You can't stop now. I ain't gonna sleep anyhow."
Jess swallowed hard and said, "Seems to me somebody is eliminating—people."
"How'd they do that?" Marv complained querulously.
Doc answered instead of Jess. "Ever hear of the screw-worm?" We all shook our heads. "Of course not. They're all gone. But they used to be a serious warm-country cattle pest. The adult females—ordinary looking flies—laid eggs on wounds or scratches in the hide of cattle. When the larvae hatched out, they burrowed into the flesh, sometimes eating the poor beasts alive."
"What's a dead screw-worm got to do with this?" Marv asked impatiently.
Jess held up his hand for time, like he held it up to a jury just as a witness was about to make the point that would swing the case. Then he nodded at Doc.
Doc went on. "Science wiped out the screw-worm. The female, it seems, mated only once. So entomologists raised flocks of males, sterilized them with gamma rays, and let them loose. The females laid infertile eggs for the rest of their lives, and the screw-worm was extinct."
"I don't see—" Marv began.
Jess cut him off. "Instead of sterile males, somebody is making sterile females, and making them so good that nobody wants to marry anything else. Look at it this way--the paternal instinct is an acquired reflex. It's practically non-existent before marriage. To a bachelor, somebody's kid is just a pest. Then he gets married. If he wants kids, it's just because he thinks it's the thing to do. Not because he needs them."
Doc nodded reluctantly. So did the rest of us.
Jess spread his hands wide. "So? We're being eliminated."
"By who?" I asked.
"About sixty years ago," Jess said, "in the fifties, lots of people swore they saw flying saucers in the air. In the last twenty years there hasn't been much of that. My guess is that somebody—call them Martians, or maybe Venusians would be better, although they're probably from outside this solar system entirely—somebody built that factory in Passaic. And maybe another in Leningrad, one in Nanking, and so forth. And now they're letting us commit suicide."
"Why would anybody—anything," By corrected, "want to do that?"
Jess said. "Earth is a pretty choice piece of real estate in the galactic neighborhood—running water, a good breeze, central heating.…So the Venusians built their factories—letting the victims subsidize them to keep the places growing—and waited for time to do their work for them. In a century or less, they can come back and take possession; the former tenants will be gone for good. Simple, effective, and cheap. Nothing messy like armed invasion."
"If we're being conquered," Marv argued, "why doesn't the government do something about it?"
We all looked at Lije. Up to now, he hadn't said hardly anything.
"Suppose we were being conquered in that way," Lije said quietly. "What could the government do? Suppose they told you, Marv, that Candy was an invasion weapon. You'd either laugh at them or get mad and vote somebody in who wasn't such a damn fool. Suppose they told you to get rid of her. Good-by, Washington."
"Well, sure—" Marv said vigorously.
"Another thing," Lije said. "Suppose the government stopped that factory in Passaic from turning out girls like Candy and Kim and Choo-Choo and Dallas and April and Tracy—and that would be pretty close to sacrilege—chances are 99 to 1 that somebody or something would get a warning to Venus: plan number one has failed; start plan number two. And number two might be the messy kind. Any race that knows enough about science to make a woman—and by golly! they are women, all except for the babies—and knows enough about me to make a woman like Kim, I don't want to tangle with."
We just sat there, no more objections in us, trying to get used to the idea. Intellectually, we were convinced. But we couldn't face the consequences.
"Wait a fraction," said By. "Lije, you talked real certain for a man who was just supposing."
"I ought to," Lije said. "It's all true. Maybe I shouldn't be letting it out, but the government's been going around with this thing for years now. Maybe you fellows can figure out an answer. We can't. If it gets out for good it would start such a panic that the Venusians wouldn't have to wait a century."
Suddenly Marv blurted out, "I won't give up Candy. I don't care what she is, I couldn't ask for anything more in a woman. And anyone who tries to take her away had better come armed and with friends."
"I guess we know how you feel," Jess said, "because we all feel the same way." We nodded. "Nevertheless, we got to make a real sacrifice. The way I look at it, we're soldiers now, and soldiers got to face hardship."
We all nodded, grimly. I never did get to bet that full house.
Well, we've done it. The Venusians, when they come back next century, are in for a nasty surprise.
Life is a mite different now. Take yesterday, for instance. I locked up my bank—I'm president now—and walked a few blocks to a little cottage with a white fence around it. The kids came tumbling out the door: Kit, 5; Kevin, 4; Laurie, 3; Linda 2; and Karl, 1. They swarmed over me like ants over a crumb, holding my legs, tugging at my arms. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" they shouted, all except Karl, who doesn't talk yet, but he clings as hard as anybody.
I dragged them to the front door, feeling only half my 44 years. There I peeled them away, one by one, and smacked them, once on the face, once on the bottom.
"Well," Jane said nastily, "did you decide you could spend a few minutes with your family?"
I grunted something and pecked at her sweaty cheek. She'd been bending over the stove, fixing supper for the brood.
"You're sure you can spare the time?" she asked sarcastically. "We wouldn't want to deprive anybody of your company."
I went and sat down in my favorite chair, not answering. It's better not to answer. Jane is large and round again, eight months along, and they're worse then. They're bad enough usually but worse then. But I could tell she was glad to see me.
"Goodness knows," she snarled, "it isn't as if we need you. You can leave any time you feel like it."
"Yes, dear," I said, but I knew better than to move.
"Just because you pay the bills," Jane said, shaking a spoon at me, "you think you own us. Well, let me tell you—"
You see how it is? The Venusians made one big mistake: they forgot the basic mating peculiarity of the human species: the female is naturally monogamous, and the male, polygamous.
I can stand Jane all right. In a way it's kind of refreshing. It's only one night a week, and if I get fed up I can get up and leave any time I feel like it. I can get up and go home to April.
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